


when the world gets too heavy, put it on my back

by arashiyama (harukatenoh)



Category: World Trigger
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 11:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11554602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harukatenoh/pseuds/arashiyama
Summary: When Miwa falls, when the world kicks him down and leaves him hurting, Yoneya is there to pick him back up.





	when the world gets too heavy, put it on my back

**Author's Note:**

> [proves my dominance in the wrt archive by posting two fics in one day]
> 
> i love yonemiwa so much... if you couldn't tell this fic was originally going to be an exploration of jin's death that we all know is coming but i'm gay and made it yonemiwa instead
> 
> fic title is from always by panic at the disco

Yuuichi Jin dies on a Monday, in a sacrifice nobody had asked of him. A sacrifice that puts an end to a two day long invasion, saving countless lives and avenging the ones already lost.

You realise, nothing will ever be the same again.

You had liked him - you think everyone in Border had liked him to some degree. He had always had an uncanny way of slipping into somebody's affections, bringing people together as he did. He had been meddlesome, sure, but anybody could see that he had cared. Yuuichi Jin did a lot of caring, even when it seemed like otherwise.

You had liked him. You hadn’t been close, but Jin was Jin and he was impossible to not like. You feel his death as hardly as many of Border do, a mix of disbelief and despair and grief that sends your stomach churning.

When Jin dies, he takes all the colour out of Border with him. On the first day, many members can't find it in them to step inside headquarters, and the leaders can't find it in them to make them. The building, already damaged from the invasion, becomes a melancholy place, all the liveliness taken by the prior battles and the losses that came with it.

The only thing he leaves behind is a black trigger, ensuring the future of his comrades even after death, and although nobody will say it, when he's ready to take up the mantle, it will go to Osamu Mikumo. Jin had been close with many, but it seemed wrong, unfitting, to give it to anybody but the person Jin had died for.

That doesn't stop you wishing, however, that it would go to somebody else.

Miwa takes Jin's death worse than most. He has already lost so much, you think and you ache, because Miwa has lost so much and you...

You will never be able to make up for it. You cannot fill the hole in his heart even if he would let you get close enough to try, and the thing that hurts the most about this situation is that you can’t. Miwa locks himself away and Jin is no longer around to appear out of nowhere and annoy him into being a human again, as opposed to a shadow. You are not what Miwa needs nor what he wants, and that fact leaves you weary, boneless, exhausted.

Tonight, Miwa has disappeared from his room and you are on the search, although it’s not much of a search. You know where he is. You find that you don’t want to go. You, for once, just once, want to leave Miwa to his own devices and go home and nurse your own wounds.

Of course, you set your feet on a course towards Miwa anyway because he has always come first. In the carefully placed away part of your heart that shatters every time he looks away from you, he always comes first.

The night seems darker and the stars seem dimmer now that you know that some of them out there are the reason you’re stuck wandering the streets in the dead of night. The buildings come into view and so does a lonely figure, a barely there figure.

He comes into view, and you wave a greeting.

“Sitting in the middle of the danger zone alone isn’t the best idea, you know.” You call, your steady voice and light tone effectively hiding the wave of longing that comes over you at the sight of Miwa. Your breath catches as his eyes turn to you, dull and red-rimmed and the cracks start forming on your heart and on your face and it takes everything you have to pull it back together. Miwa is beautiful, Miwa is dangerous, Miwa is the reason you can’t sleep at night and the reason you can’t breathe during the day and Miwa is not yours.

His hair is slightly damp, the remnants of the rain that had fallen before sticking. It falls in his eyes and makes him look his age for once, makes him look like the tired and grieving boy that he is. You step closer and wish you could push those strands back, but you don’t. The last time you tried to touch Miwa he flinched, whole body jerking away from your wandering fingers, and you don’t think you can take a repeat of the sinking, falling sensation that followed.

“Hey.” He simply says, an acknowledgement of your presence that you take as permission to join him in his vigil. You brush away the dust on the ground to give yourself something to do, then lower yourself gently down to sit next to Miwa.

“How are you feeling?” You ask, mostly to fill the emptiness in the air. Miwa doesn’t say anything, and you sigh and settle in for the night, anticipating that Miwa isn’t going to open up this time. The time passes silently, like it always does, and it seems wrong to you that the world is just continuing on even when everything has changed.

When Miwa breaks the silence, he breaks your heart too.

“Yousuke,” he says and his voice is hoarse from disuse. You turn to look at him, and he’s not looking at you. “Please, please stay safe. Don’t try any reckless things. Keep yourself alive during battles, run away, hide if you have to, I just-”

His voice cracks, and before you can fully register it, Miwa is crying. You don’t know what to do, what to say. This is the first time that Miwa has cried in front of you and it is raw, painful, the sound biting into you like glass.

“I’ve lost nearly everything to those Neighbours. I... I can’t have you go the same way.” Miwa sounds defeated, broken and you want to scream, curse, wreak vengeance on the universe that opened this wound in him and then continues to kick at it.

Even more than that, you want to piece Miwa back together, help him heal this wound until it’s a near-forgotten scar, cover it up so that it doesn’t fester and rot and eat away at Miwa until he’s only a shell. You want to help him; you don’t presume to think that you can save him, but you want to help him.

“Shuuji…” You whisper. That’s all you can think to say, because you don’t know how to fix this, you don’t know how to help him. Miwa turns to you and his tears have mostly stopped but his eyes are still shining. You remember, and it’s like a shot to your brain, that you’re both only seventeen. You have only struggled through seventeen years of life so far, a tiny amount in comparison to the decades and decades that you have to go.

Miwa is silent again, but at least he’s looking at you now, so you venture out further, making your words gentle and malleable.

“I’m still here Shuuji. I’m not going anywhere, I promise. I’ll stay with you.” You think of the countless nights where Miwa, plagued by nightmares, buried himself in your bed. You think of how each time, you talk to him until he’s asleep, you place your blanket over him gently. You think of how you stay up, not looking at Miwa directly but occasionally glancing over to make sure he’s still there. Still beside you.

Miwa sleeps still, as still as the dead. When you two were younger, you would always shake him awake out of fear he was really dead. You needed him beside you then, just like you do now. He needed you beside him then, just like he does now.

“How can you be sure of that?” The familiar resentment creeps back into Miwa’s tone, which, while better than the empty, broken voice he used earlier, still makes you curl your hands into fists.

You shuffle closer to him, and gently push back the few bits of his bangs that fall into his eyes. He blinks as you do this, confused, unguarded.

“I’ve been here from the start, haven’t I? I’m still here, aren’t I? I’m pretty good at this whole thorn-in-your-side thing.” You keep your voice light, in an attempt to cheer Miwa up. It’s a pretty empty attempt, but you’re both pretty empty people.

Miwa frowns, which is the opposite of what you want and you panic a bit, drawing your hand back from his hair a little too quickly to be natural.

“You’re not a thorn in my side.” He says gently. “You’re - you’re all I have, Yousuke.”

The words are simultaneously uplifting and crushing; they’re all you ever wanted to hear and never in the context you wanted to hear them. Miwa looks at you, a look to take away your breath and your heart. It is a look that is imploring, desperate and grave. You are well versed in Miwa, in his eyes and his body language and you think you understand what he’s asking you.

You sit, in the middle of the danger zone in the middle of the night and realize that the boy you have loved your entire life is asking you to stay with him. When you say it like that, it doesn’t seem like much, but Miwa has spent years and years holding people at an arm’s length, even you.

You shuffle closer to him again, until your legs are side by side. You put your arm around him, gently, and he leans into you, a little too fast and a little too desperate. You don’t mind. Like every cliched film that you and Izumi end up sobbing over, his head seems to fit just right into the crook of your neck. You have a sneaking suspicion that in general, heads and neck crooks are just compatible body parts, but you put it down to your compatibility anyway.

“I miss my sister.” Miwa says it like he’s stating a fact. “I miss Jin.” This time, he’s a little more hesitant to say it, but you know it’s a fact as well. A fact of Miwa’s heart, the ever unstable thing. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you too, Yousuke.”

As he says this, you stare up at the stars and you mourn. They seem so small, so far away that you don’t think their light even reaches you. When you were younger, you enjoyed watching the stars slowly appear in the sky, but they offer you no comfort now. They just leave you in the darkness. You think you were always more of a day person.

Miwa seems to have calmed down. You think you can just feel his heartbeat and it’s steady, beating out the rhythm of life, a slow, unsteady one, but there nonetheless.

“Wanna head to my place?” You ask him quietly, and after a moment of considering, he nods. You reluctantly let him go so you can both stand up, and as soon as you’re on your feet you offer him your hand. He accepts without hesitation, which makes your heart jump more than it should. You pull him up, hand tight around his, and manage to steady him when he stumbles on his feet, your breath catching as you do.

“You okay to walk?” You ask, and you’re glad that you somehow keep the fear out of your voice. Miwa takes a moment to balance himself, and then nods. You breathe out slowly, wondering when the last time Miwa slept was.

You don’t think you want to know, so instead you say “Are you sure you don’t want me to carry you bridal style back home?” He scoffs at that, sounding the most alive he has all night and your emotions steady a bit. Then even though he rejects your offer to carry him, you throw your arm around his shoulders and pull him closer.

He gives you a confused look as you do this, and with a smirk you say “Walk on the inside. It’s dangerous.”

Miwa gives you a withering look and you laugh at that, but to your pleasure he doesn’t remove your arm from around him. The night is quiet enough that you think Miwa can hear your heart hammering away, and you almost hope he can hear it. You hope he can hear it, hear your heart going _see what kind of havoc you cause in me, Shuuji? You really think I’ll leave your side when I’m like this?_

You walk in silence, still perfectly in step with each other, until a thought occurs to you that makes you snicker.

“When was the last time you had a shower, Shuuji?”

“Shut the hell up, Yousuke.”

And now your heart is going _Aren’t you lucky, Shuuji. Even when you’re an unshowered, unkempt mess, I still love you._ You hope he can’t hear it this time.


End file.
